TMI Blog

1967 (10) TMI 72

hal Pradesh, is directed against his judgment allowing a petition fined by the respondents and issuing a writ of mandamus directing the Divisional Forest Officer, Sarahan Forest Division, and the Chief Conservator of Forests, Himachal Pradesh - hereinafter referred to as the appellants - to issue or get issued the necessary permission for felling the trees and the transit pass, in respect of certain khasra numbers. 2. In order to appreciate the points raised by the learned counsel for the appellants, it is necessary to set out the relevant facts. Land measuring 27 bighas and 16 biswas comprised in khasra Nos. 452/1, 453, 453/1, 40, 100 and 440 and situated in village Kadiali, Tahsil Theog, District Mahasu, belonged to Government and was und .....

Art. 226 of the Constitution. 3. It was urged before the Judicial Commissioner, on behalf of the Divisional Forest Officer that the respondents had no interest in the trees standing on their land as the trees were not 'land' as defined in s. 2(5) of the Act, and that the Compensation Officer was not competent to grant, and, in fact, did not grant proprietary rights in the trees to the deceased Moti Ram. The learned Judicial Commissioner, following Vijay Kumari Thakur v. H. P. Administration held that the appellants were estopped from contending that the respondents had no interest in the trees. He further held that the respondents were granted permission to sell the trees standing on their land and they had, in fact, entered into an .....

and remove the trees within a period of ten years, and the plaintiff brought a suit asking for a perpetual injunction to issue to the defendants-respondents to restrain them from preventing him from cutting and removing certain trees from the land belonging to the defendants-respondents. The lower courts held that the trees growing on agricultural land were "land" within the meaning of the expression as defined in s. 2(3) of the Punjab Alienation of Land Act, and, therefore, their sale to the plaintiff was unlawful having regard to the provisions of that Act. The Lahore High Court held that the sale did not infringe the provisions of that Act because the sale of trees was not a sale of land. The High Court was not concerned with .....

rees are really forest trees and it was never the intention of the legislature to vest forest trees in the tenants acquiring land under s. 11 of the Act. But no such contention seems to have been raised in the written statement filed by the appellants. It might have been different if it had been proved that the portion of the area transferred to Moti Ram was a natural forest. [see Kaju Mal v. Salig Ram (1919) Punj. Rec. 237. 9. The learned counsel referring to s. 84 of the Act points out that one of the consequences of vesting of land in the State Government under s. 83 is that trees expressly vest in the State. He says that if it was the intention to vest trees in the tenant acquiring land under s. 11 of the Act, it would have been similar .....